What Time Is Rush Hour in Nashville?

February 19, 2026

Morning rush runs from 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Evening rush runs from 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM. Both are consistent across weekdays, and both affect all major interstates.

That is the official answer. The practical answer is more complicated.

Nashville’s traffic problem is not just that it has bad rush hours. It is that the window between them is shorter than it should be, and it has nearly disappeared on certain corridors. According to the 2024 INRIX Traffic Scorecard, Nashville drivers lost 63 hours to congestion in 2024, with peak commute speeds dropping to 29 mph versus an off-peak 48 mph. TomTom’s own 2025 data found that during evening rush, average speeds in Nashville fell to 27.5 km/h (about 17 mph) with an 83.7 percent congestion level. The morning window is measurably better, but not by as much as it used to be.

Morning Rush: 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM

The worst of the inbound morning traffic concentrates on I-24 from the Murfreesboro side, I-65 from the Franklin and Brentwood corridor, and I-40 from the east. The commute from Brentwood to downtown during peak hours runs 25 to 28 minutes under normal conditions, roughly double the off-peak time. From Murfreesboro on I-24, plan for 45 to 60 minutes instead of the usual 30 to 35.

HOV lanes are enforced from 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM on the major interstates. Carpooling during this window gets you into the HOV lane, which can cut meaningful time on the main corridors.

If you leave before 7:00 AM, the roads are consistently clear. The window from 5:00 AM to 6:45 AM is the cleanest driving window Nashville has. After 9:00 AM, things improve noticeably, though they do not fully clear until around 10:00 AM.

Evening Rush: 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM (Sometimes Later)

The afternoon window is consistently worse than the morning. TomTom data puts evening congestion at nearly twice the level of morning congestion. Nashville’s outbound traffic is spread across multiple suburban corridors simultaneously: south on I-65 toward Brentwood, Franklin, and Spring Hill; southeast on I-24 toward Antioch and Murfreesboro; east on I-40 toward Hermitage and Mount Juliet; and north on I-65 toward Hendersonville.

There is no single relief valve. Every highway fills at the same time because the city is surrounded by bedroom communities in every direction.

HOV lanes are also enforced from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on the main interstates. Outside those hours, anyone can use them.

The practical outer boundary of evening rush is closer to 7:00 PM on Fridays. Thursday evening also tends to run later than typical weeknights, as downtown nightlife starts early heading into the weekend.

The Part Nobody Mentions: The Tourist Traffic Layer

Nashville draws millions of visitors annually, concentrated on weekends. Friday and Saturday evenings bring a second wave of congestion onto downtown streets that has nothing to do with commuters. Broadway, Second Avenue, and the surrounding blocks see peak gridlock between 9:00 PM and 11:30 PM on Friday and Saturday nights as bars fill and rideshare pickups clog intersections. This is not rush hour in the traditional sense, but it is slower than the city’s official peak traffic windows on those roads.

CMA Fest in June, New Year’s Eve, major Titans and Predators playoff runs, and large concerts at Bridgestone Arena or Nissan Stadium create event-driven traffic spikes that can add 20 to 40 minutes to any trip within a mile of downtown.

The Best and Worst Times to Drive

The cleanest windows: Before 7:00 AM, between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM, and after 7:30 PM on most weeknights.

The worst windows: Monday through Friday 7:00 to 9:00 AM on any highway heading into downtown; Monday through Friday 4:00 to 6:30 PM on any highway heading out of downtown; Friday afternoons in general; and any night when Bridgestone Arena, Nissan Stadium, or Ascend Amphitheater has a large event.

The average Nashville commute time is 25 minutes each way, which sounds manageable until you notice that it assumes you have optimized your departure time. Leave at 8:15 AM on a Tuesday instead of 7:00 AM and that 25-minute trip to downtown from Brentwood becomes a 45-minute one.

Sources

  • INRIX 2024 Global Traffic Scorecard, via WSMV Nashville (January 2025): wsmv.com
  • TomTom Traffic Index, Nashville TN (2025 data): tomtom.com/traffic-index/city/nashville-tn
  • ItsInNashville.com, “Best Times to Drive in Nashville” (November 2025): itsinnashville.com
  • TNRealEstate.com, “How to Avoid Nashville Traffic” (April 2023): tnrealestate.com/blog/driving-nashville
  • NashvillesSMLS.com, Nashville drive time maps and commute guide: nashvillesmls.com/drive-time-map.php
  • HOV enforcement hours: Tennessee state HOV lane rules, via nashvillesmls.com

Related posts:

  1. How Do You Avoid Parking Tickets in Nashville? Nashville's parking enforcement is concentrated downtown, where five Metro enforcement officers write an average of 2,800 tickets per month. Two-thirds of those tickets are issued within the core downtown loop......
  2. What State Is Nashville In? Nashville is in Tennessee, specifically in the north-central part of the state, in a region Tennesseans call Middle Tennessee. It's the state capital and has been since 1843, when it......
  3. What Is the Population of Nashville? Nashville is the 21st most populous city in the United States. The 2024 Census estimate puts the city proper at 704,963 people. That's Davidson County minus the handful of small......
  4. Why Is Nashville Called Music City? The name "Music City" was handed to Nashville by a stranger in 1950, and the city has been building on it ever since. When Queen Marie of Yugoslavia visited in......
  5. What Are Nashville’s Nicknames? Nashville has collected more nicknames than most American cities, and they don't all point in the same direction. Some are earned from a century of genuine cultural identity. Some are......
  6. What Time Zone Is Nashville In? Nashville is in the Central Time Zone. In winter (standard time), that's UTC−6, known as Central Standard Time (CST). In summer (daylight saving time), it shifts to UTC−5, called Central......
  7. What Major Cities Are Closest to Nashville? Nashville sits in the geographic center of the eastern United States, which is one reason it's been a distribution and transportation hub since the 19th century. The closest major cities......
  8. Is Nashville a Southern City? Yes. Unambiguously. The debate about Nashville's Southern identity exists mostly among people who want to claim the city as culturally neutral or who confuse "progressive on some issues" with "not......
  9. How Is Nashville Different from the Rest of Tennessee? Nashville and the rest of Tennessee have been pulling in different directions for decades, and the gap has widened significantly since 2010. The differences are political, economic, cultural, and demographic,......
  10. What Is Nashville’s Geography Like? Nashville sits in a geological depression called the Nashville Basin, a low-lying oval of relatively flat land surrounded on all sides by the Highland Rim. The Highland Rim is an......
  11. Does Nashville Have Four Seasons? Nashville has four seasons, and all four are genuine. None of them are extreme by the standards of the northern United States, but each is distinct enough that you'll know......
  12. What Is the Weather Like in Nashville? Nashville has a humid subtropical climate, four actual seasons, hot and sticky summers, mild winters, and enough rain year-round that the city stays green. The quick version: roughly 205 sunny......
  13. What Is the Hottest Month in Nashville? July is the hottest month in Nashville. The average high in July is 89°F, the average low is 70°F, and the combination of that heat with peak humidity makes it......
  14. What Is the Coldest Month in Nashville? January is the coldest month in Nashville. The average high is 47°F. The average low is 27°F. The city gets about 22 days with temperatures below freezing per year, and......

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *